watcher
Also by Valerie Sherrard
Kate
Sam’s Light
Sarah’s Legacy
Three Million Acres of Flame
Speechless
The Shelby Belgarden Mysteries
Out of the Ashes
In Too Deep
Chasing Shadows
Hiding in Plain Sight
Eyes of a Stalker
Searching for Yesterday
Books For Younger People
There’s a COW Under my Bed!
There’s a GOLDFISH in my Shoe!
Tumbleweed Skies
watcher
valerie sherrard
DUNDURN PRESS
TORONTO
Copyright © Valerie Sherrard, 2009
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
Editor: Allison Hirst
Design: Jennifer Scott
Printer: Webcom
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Sherrard, Valerie
Watcher / Valerie Sherrard.
ISBN 978-1-55488-431-5
I. Title.
PS8587.H3867W38 2009 jC813’.6 C2009-903263-5
1 2 3 4 5 13 12 11 10 09
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
Printed and bound in Canada.
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Parental Alienation is a form of abuse
involving the destruction of a child’s relationship
with one parent by the other.
It is, for the most part, an unpunished crime.
Those who pay the highest price are its victims:
the children,
who often become innocent participants.
Our courts have failed them.
This book is dedicated to those children.
Justice is truth in action.
— Benjamin Disraeli
contents
prologue
chapter one
chapter two
chapter three
chapter four
chapter five
chapter six
chapter seven
chapter eight
chapter nine
chapter ten
chapter eleven
chapter twelve
chapter thirteen
chapter fourteen
chapter fifteen
chapter sixteen
chapter seventeen
chapter eighteen
chapter nineteen
chapter twenty
chapter twenty-one
chapter twenty-two
chapter twenty-three
chapter twenty-four
chapter twenty-five
chapter twenty-six
chapter twenty-seven
epilogue
acknowledgements
prologue
I called him The Watcher.
He appeared to be in his early forties, casually dressed and basically nondescript-looking. I might never have noticed him except there were too many times that he was just standing around. I think that’s what grabbed my eye. In the city, everyone seems to be in motion most of the time. Still, I think there was something else.
It could have been that kind of crawly feeling you get when you sense someone watching you. I caught him at it a couple of times, but usually when I swung my head around he’d be checking his watch or looking somewhere else or walking away without so much as a glance in my direction. I decided that he was slick, but no pro.
There was something familiar about him. I could never say exactly what, but it bugged me enough that I eventually ran it by Tack.
Tack, besides being my best friend, is definitely my oldest one. He’s been around since I learned how to tie my own shoes. Back then we played together on the patch of ground that’s supposed to pass for a lawn between our apartment buildings.
The yard might have had grass at some point in time, but not in my recollection. A few tufts jut up here and there but the rest of the surface is dirt that clearly has no intention of growing anything. You can tell, the way it’s hard and pale, not rich and dark like the soil in the flowerbeds of classy neighbourhoods. You can find them anywhere. They’re just a short subway ride and about a universe away.
Tack isn’t his real name, by the way. You probably already guessed that. His actual name is Jeremiah, but the only person I’ve ever heard call him that is his mom. To the rest of the world, he’s been Tack for as long as I can remember. Don’t know how it got started, but it would be weird to call him anything else.
I’m tougher than Tack, though you wouldn’t believe it if you saw us together. He has a good forty pounds and five inches on me, with all kinds of muscle and tone, while I look more like a pencil-necked techie.
I suppose we look funny when we hang out — Tack, tall and buff with his black skin glowing; me, thin and so white in contrast that I probably look as if I’m about to pass out.
I’m tough, though. You can ask anyone, and they’ll tell you the same thing. I never bail out for any reason. I’d pick fight over flight any day of the week and never think twice about it. Matter of pride or honour — call it what you want, but I’ll throw down with anybody, anytime.
Guys can tell, too. They can smell fear, taste it even, and if they catch so much as a hint, they’ll circle you like a pack of wolves and tear you to shreds. But when they see that you’re ready to stand, unafraid, almost eager to dig in, that makes them think.
Usually.
There are exceptions, and that can cost you. I’ve been hurt a few times, but I took three guys once and two another, and they paid for the damage they did to me.
Our apartment was on a Toronto street I’d rather not name, in an Ontario Housing complex. There was a “government-funded” look and a perpetual foul smell in the hallways, like somewhere in the building someone was cooking cabbage every minute of the day. The apartments themselves weren’t really that bad, but the only people we ever invited over were each other, by which I mean other occupants of the same collection of concrete boxes.
In a neighbourhood where the faces were constantly changing, it was a bit surprising that Tack and I had both been there for as long as we had. That was because our mothers were both single parents who’d found themselves trapped in the low-income cycle. They were always claiming that they were going to get out of there. As if that could ever happen without an action plan that goes past words.
Our fathers were what you’d call absent, though Tack saw his a couple of times that I can remember. The first time didn’t go so well and he never mentioned the last vi
sit. Not a word and I never asked. It’s his story to tell when he gets it settled in his head.
My memories of my old man were kind of murky since my folks split up when I was pretty young. The year before I started kindergarten. The few memories I had of him weren’t what you’d call pleasant. Mom always said we were much better off without him. She would say, “Who needs someone who left his family to rot on welfare for the rest of their lives?”
I knew one thing — I wasn’t going to be rotting in that place the rest of my life. I was getting out of there. That place turned people into the living dead. I saw them everywhere, the ones who’d given up, their eyes emptied of hope. I was getting away from them, away from the yelling and crying that came at me through the thin walls, away from the sounds of despair — sounds that echoed like lingering ghosts on summer nights when it was too hot to sleep.
In that neighbourhood, it was hard to hear anything that didn’t carry the sound of defeat.
I had it all figured out — my escape. And I’d learned something that was going to make a difference for me. I’d learned that knowing what you needed to do and actually doing it were two entirely different things. Sounds like something any idiot could figure out, doesn’t it? That’s what I thought, too.
The truth is, I didn’t exactly get off to the best start. I spent a few years goofing off from school quite a lot. Started out maybe a couple of times a month, but it soon got to be two or three times a week. Not for whole days (usually) but a period here, an afternoon there. You know how it is.
I had better things to do than listen to a bunch of teachers drone on about stuff that was never going to matter to me. So, Tack and I had gotten into a bit of a habit you might call it, ditching classes and getting high out behind the dumpsters in back of our apartment buildings. We’d wait for our mothers to leave so we could sneak inside, kick back, and crank up some tunes.
Didn’t seem like any kind of a problem. We managed to keep our mothers off our cases by staying a step or two ahead of them. Having an answer ready was the most important thing. If you were prepared, you were spared. That’s how it worked for us, anyhow.
The main thing that saved us was that we could squeak by without failing or anything, and things might have just kept on that way if it hadn’t been for a bit of a situation we got ourselves into.
It was one of those things that you do because you’re not exactly thinking clearly. Not that I’m making excuses, but if we’d been straight, it might not have happened. We weren’t straight, it did happen, and we got caught.
It was stupid, start to finish. We stuffed some CDs under our shirts in a little music shop near where we lived, and walked out. The owner was working that day. He saw us, knew who we were, and reported it. The cops stopped us before we even made it home.
Court was next. Not so bad for Tack because he was a first offender (though he got more than his share of trouble at home). He got community service and had to write an apology to the storeowner.
I got it worse because it wasn’t my first offence. Or second. I’d had a couple of minor problems before that and the judge told me I’d run out of chances to prove I could straighten up on my own.
For the record, I really wasn’t a criminal. The “previous convictions” that the Crown Prosecutor kept referring to when he was trying to persuade the judge I was some kind of big menace to society, were just a couple of pranks that caused a bit of damage. A broken bedroom window, a dent on someone’s car fender, totally minor stuff. But, all of a sudden (with this CD thing) I found myself a three-time offender.
My mother was in court with me. She moved like someone fragmented — from fury to tears and back, finally settling on a state that managed to include both. Any second I failed to look sufficiently miserable and sorry for my deeds brought a glare, a hiss, and a wordless message that I was bringing shame and hurt to her.
It was way worse than the sentence.
“One year of supervised probation.” It was a relief to hear this at last, after more than three hours of my mother’s performance, and a long, harsh lecture from the judge that came out like a recitation.
I half expected him to wrap up with, “And may God have mercy on your soul.”
That wasn’t the turning point, but it shoved me toward it.
Anyway, I seem to have gotten a bit off track. I started out telling you about the guy who was watching me.
chapter one
Spring had just swept in, pushing out the winter with steady winds and the swollen kind of rain you only get at that time of year. The snow sizzled and shrank into itself. Huge white hills turned into withered, dirty mounds that finally disappeared, melting and joining the streams of water that pulsed along the streets.
I’ve always liked the spring. It’s like the whole city is in a better mood then. Winter layers get peeled back — it’s a kind of freedom.
This particular day, and I think it was a Saturday late in May but I’m not a hundred percent on that, I’d gotten up late. When I saw that it was drizzling outside I put on one of my mom’s CDs. Her taste in music doesn’t exactly agree with mine, but some of the stuff she has is okay. At least it’s not what Tack’s mom likes, which is old tunes so mournful and drawn out they’d have to cheer themselves up before you could call them the blues.
I had The Hip on, playing “Blow at High Dough” loud enough to feel it. It’s a song you can’t sit down to and I was on my feet moving across the living room floor like it was a stage. The second it ended I hit the repeat button on the remote, waited impatiently for the opening riffs to finish, and felt the pulse of the song rise up through me again.
“Well, I ain’t no movie star,” I howled, joining Gordon Downie on the second spin, “but I can get behind anything. Yeah, I can get behind anything.”
That song always made me feel like I could. Get behind anything.
I became aware of Tack standing in the doorway about halfway through the second verse, which cut off my performance before the fans could get a full taste of my talent. I hit stop on the remote (which I might as well tell you had been doubling as a “microphone”) and faced him.
“What?” I demanded. His face was just barely keeping a smirk under control.
“You need a drive somewhere?” he asked. “Like a Canadian Idol audition, maybe?”
“Why, did you bring your Saab?”
He shook his head sadly. “Trunk’s too small.”
“For what?”
“Not for your talent, that’s for sure. But you can’t be sittin’ next to me like some kind of babe repellent.”
At least he didn’t call me repugnant, I thought. The previous weekend he’d watched Jackie Brown for about the fifth time, and since then everything had been repugnant to him. (Tack’s a big Tarantino fan. He’s seen all of his movies so many times he knows half the lines.)
“The ladies get a look at a skinny white dude like yourself,” Tack went on, “you just know they got to find it repugnant.”
There it was.
We spent the next few minutes deciding what to do, or, more accurately, where to go. There was never actually anything much to do most of the places we hung out, unless we happened to have some cash, which wasn’t often. Mainly, we just kicked around and talked about things we were going to do someday.
Sometimes, if we had a few bucks we’d take the subway — get off at some random station, walk around a bit, and then head home, or somewhere else. We’d seen some pretty weird things, and not all of them in bad neighbourhoods.
Once, a couple of blocks from the stop at Yonge and Rosedale, we saw an old woman standing in the middle of the street singing in a high, squeaky voice.
The weird and, well, sad part was that she was wearing a housecoat and nothing else. That wouldn’t even have been so bad if she’d had it done up, but she didn’t. With every wave of her arm it fluttered open a little, revealing a body so thin she looked like a skeleton with some loose skin flapping. I swear I didn’t want to look but
I couldn’t help myself. It was horrifying and fascinating all at once.
What it wasn’t was one bit funny, so it really got me going a minute later when some kids — I’d say they were between nine and twelve — came along and started laughing and shouting things that aren’t worth repeating.
I was torn then, because I’d have liked to smash them all — just one good pop each — but they were just kids. And, anyway, before I could react, Tack stepped out. I was pretty surprised, and curious to see what he might do.
The kids saw him coming, saw the look on his face, and suddenly decided they had somewhere else to be. They took off whooping and shrieking but he wasn’t heading for them.
He reached the old gal just a minute or two before a tired-looking woman hurried out of a nearby house and headed toward her. Tack got there first and said something real quiet to the old woman. Then he tugged the housecoat together and did up a couple of buttons so fast I don’t think she even knew it had happened.
She started to yell — a hollow, haunting sound that went on and on. By then the woman, probably either her daughter or daughter-in-law, had reached her. She said something to Tack, then took hold of the old gal’s arm and talked gently to her as she led her away.
Tack shrugged but he looked sort of wounded. When he’d rejoined me on the sidewalk, I asked him what she’d said.
“She said I should be ashamed of myself.”
“For what?” I was instantly enraged.
“Who knows, man? She don’t know what went down. She just sees the old woman howlin’ like a banshee, and I’m right there so she figures I done something wrong.”
It seemed as if he’d brushed it off — like a bug of some sort — but you can’t always tell with Tack. Lots of things have to set with him for a bit. I knew that had happened when we’d walked in silence for a while and all of a sudden he asked, “Think she woulda said the same thing to you?”
I knew what he was really asking, but I just said, “Yeah, probably.”
A few more silent moments and then Tack asked, “Whaddya think was wrong with her? The old one?”
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